Woman who pretended she was a man during sex with a friend has been found guilty of sexual assault in retrial

Nearly two years after she was first charged with five counts of assault by penetration, after pretending to be a man during sexual intercourse with another woman, Gayle Newland has been found guilty of sexual assault in a retrial.

The jury at the Manchester Crown Court trial found the 27-year-old guilty of the crime by using a prosthetic penis without her victim's consent, reports The Independent. The woman she tricked was one of her friends.

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Newland managed to masquerade as a man called Kye Fortune for so long by tying her chest with bandages, putting on a deep voice, covering her hair in a woolly hat, and only having sex with her 'girlfriend' when she was blindfolded.

She had initially been jailed for eight years in November 2015 after being found guilty of three counts of sexual assault, but the decision was reversed in December 2016 when the original trial judge was found not to have been fair and balanced. Newland was given a new trial, which came to a conclusion today when she was found guilty once again.

"She was a very crafty young woman who went to astonishing lengths to control the complainant's life"

Prosecuting lawyer Simon Medland QC told the jury in the retrial that the defendant's actions were"manipulative" and "deceitful", calling her a "very crafty young woman [who] went to such astonishing lengths to control the complainant's life."

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Newland reportedly told her victim that she couldn't touch her 'penis', and used a prosthetic one during sex so it would seem like 'Kye' was male. She apparently came up with an excuse about Kye being self conscious about his body after being involved in a car crash, which is why the victim was asked to wear a blindfold at all times during sex - and was also the reasoning for Newland wearing bandages around her chest.

The defendant also allegedly told the victim that Kye's voice was high pitched because of Filipino heritage.

In a previous trial regarding the case, the victim is said to have told the court that she would have "preferred to have been raped by a man" after being "sickened" when she discovered the truth about Kye.

The relationship allegedly began on Facebook (with a fake profile for Kye having been set up by Newland), and developed online after the victim's reported requests to meet up in person were consistently denied by Kye with "repeated excuses".

Everything came out in the open in 2015, however, when the victim became suspicious and removed the blindfold during sex, at which point she discovered the horrifying truth.